The Latest Clue Apple is Making AR Glasses

A series of workplace injury reports from Apple hint at a possible AR headset as well as updates to the Apple Watch.

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There's a big new clue that Apple may be working on its own augmented reality glasses, and it's come from the most unlikely of places: a workplace incident report.

(Image credit: Apple Glass concept. Credit: Tailosive Tech / YouTube)

The leaked report, which was obtained by Gizmodo, makes note of over 70 incidents at Apple's campuses. Some of them are mundane, while other contain eyebrow-raising clues about the company's next wave of products.

Several of these reports deal with eye strain issues, which gives a bit more weight to the possibility of an Apple AR headset. In one incident, an employee "experience discomfort in her eye and said she was able to see the laser flash at several points during the study."

A separate report involved an employee dealing with eye pain after working with some sort of "new prototype."

AR glasses aren't the only new products hinted at in these injury reports. One incident involved an employee getting hurt while out skiing to collect data that could be used to track skiing and snowboarding on an Apple Watch. Another report noted that an employee was hit by an Apple minivan, which, according to one of Gizmodo's sources, could be one of the vans that Apple uses to gather data for its Maps app.

While injury reports are a strange place to find product news, some of these testing scenarios line up with rumored Apple products and features. The company has long been expected to jump into augmented reality — Apple CEO Tim Cook has frequently championed the technology, and various rumors and patents have pointed to an Apple AR headset arriving some time in the near future.